LONDON — The British Museum here is to remove the name of the Sackler family from its walls, becoming the latest major cultural institution to cut ties with the family over its role in the opioid crisis.

The decision, announced in a news release on Friday, comes almost four months after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York reached a similar joint agreement with the Sackler family to remove its name from several exhibition spaces, including the wing that houses the Temple of Dendur.

The British Museum said in the news release that the decision was “by mutual agreement” with the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation, one of the family’s British charities.

The foundation had supported the museum for over 30 years, the news release said, making donations between the 1990s and 2013. The Sackler name would remain on a list of donors to the museum’s Great Court, because the museum “has always recognized the important relationships we have with each of our benefactors.”

While the British Museum is the biggest cultural institution in Britain to pledge to take down the Sackler name, it is not the first, with the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Tate museums having already acted to removed signage. But the move may prompt other major institutions to follow. On Friday, a spokeswoman for the National Gallery in London, whose Sackler Room contains some of the museum’s most prized paintings, said in a statement that its sponsorships and philanthropic support “are constantly under review.”

A spokeswoman for the Victoria and Albert Museum, whose glittering entrance is named the Sackler Courtyard, said the museum had no plans to remove the name.

Members of the Sackler family founded Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, the enormously profitable painkiller that has been regularly blamed for contributing to the opioid crisis in the United States. In Britain, museums have been more regularly protested for their connections to oil companies than their connections with the Sacklers. Chris Garrard of Culture Unstained, an organization that campaigns to end fossil fuel sponsorship, said in a telephone interview that Friday’s announcement “set a precedent as the British Museum has never before taken an ethical stance on who it will take money from.” He hoped the museum would now cut ties to the oil giant BP, which sponsors exhibitions.

It is unclear when the Sackler name will actually be taken down from the British Museum’s walls. The museum is protected by British heritage laws, the news release said, and any work needs to be “done sensitively.” “Consequently, we expect the changes to signage to be implemented carefully over a period of time to protect the fabric of the estate,” it said.